


Something Burning

by lymricks



Category: Justified
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-20
Updated: 2013-01-20
Packaged: 2017-11-26 05:05:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/646903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lymricks/pseuds/lymricks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The problem isn't that Raylan's there or that they’re both a little drunk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Burning

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: [Tim/Raylan - there's a martyr in my bed tonight](http://nvrleaveharlan.livejournal.com/19505.html?thread=214321#t214321) from [nvrleaveharlan](http://nvrleaveharlan.livejournal.com)

The problem isn’t that Raylan’s there, or that they’re both a little drunk, or even that he brought Winona with him. The problem is that they’re fifty miles outside of Lexington, and if Tim wanted to run into people he knows, he would have gone to the bar just down the block from his fourth floor walk up.

Raylan, it seems, has made it his one true mission to interrupt Tim’s quiet drinking nights, and Tim is going to kill him for it. He could, too. There are civilians in the bar, and obviously Winona, but it’d only take one well placed shot, and Tim? Tim has a knack for well placed shots.

He sips his whiskey and glances back toward the stage. He likes the band, and thinking about shooting like that--well, it’s the kind of thinking that makes his skin crawl when the sun is up and he’s had time to think the night over. It’s thinking born of impulse, and flight or fight ultimatums.

Winona sees him before Rayan does, and he can tell by the drum of her fingers on the tabletop and the jerk of her shoulders that she is Not Happy about it. Tim likes Winona, so he pretends he doesn’t see them, lets his eyes glaze over. It’s a good trick, one that he learned in places much less civilized than this bar, and Winona buys it--or pretends to. When he focuses back on their table, the both of them are gone. Raylan’s beer is half full, and Tim does him the favor of finishing it off.

If he’s honest, and he isn’t anymore, ever, it’s been a long one of _those_ days. Actually, that’s why he’s here, instead of his bed in Lexington. An early night heals all wounds, some wise old woman had told him once. _Bitch_ , he thinks, with all the venom he can muster, because she’d lied. It’s not a lot of venom, and he feels almost guilty about it. So he takes another sip, lets the whisky soothe the burn of the word with a burn of its own.

He drops down into Raylan and Winona’s recently vacated seats and turns his attention back to the stage. The melodies and small talk fill the bar to bursting, and the whole place smells like booze and cigarettes. Tim looks down at his hands, where they frame his now empty glass of whiskey, and Raylan’s newly emptied beer. They’re the same hands they’ve always been--fingers a little long, a scar on the back of his pointer, middle, and ring finger of his left hand. That had been a bullet, the kind that nearly chops your fingers off, but doesn’t really. Not quite.

Tim sits there and looks at his hands for too long. The band stops singing. The bar starts to empty out. When he looks up again, it’s just him and a few other warm bodies. He thinks about seeing if he could pick someone off--no, up, off is the wrong word, god _dammit_. He shakes his head, tries to clear away the cobweb thoughts, the whizbuzz of bullets.

Some nights he is just Tim Gutterson, and they’re rare nights, but they make his stomach ache.

So he leaves the bar, because fighting and fucking and drinking are all--well, kind of the same thing, and that won’t work. Only he steps outside, and there’s Raylan, all swinging hips and swagger, his cowboy hat tipped.

“Howdy,” Tim calls, and when did that become a thing, for them, exactly? Tim’s never said _howdy_ seriously in his life. Maybe once or twice when he was fifteen, but not now. Not until Raylan, if he’s honest. Raylan, who brings the cowboy out in all of them, even Rachel, but especially Tim.

“Howdy,” Raylan says, and it’s mocking in its own way.

Tim looks around, “Where’s your wife?” he asks, but he meant to say _your car_. It tugs a smile out of Raylan, the tortured kind of smile that you really have to work for, but it ends up looking like a cat might when you’d half drowned it. It resembles the thing it is, but only vaguely. “Where’s your car?” Tim tries, the words making a little more sense the second time around. He’s drunk.

“Probably with my wife,” Raylan answers. He’s keeping his distance.

“Ex-wife,” Tim corrects, which--the mix up was his anyway, so he doesn’t know why he says it. It’s not his job to correct Raylan. He keeps telling Art that, but no one seems to get it.

The water-logged-cat smile creeps over Raylan’s lips again, and Tim’s really spending too much time looking at Raylan’s lips. He drags his gaze up, finds Raylan’s eyes instead. He and Raylan are both sort of iridescent orange in the parking lot lights, and there’s a whole lot of distance between them.

“I’m gonna take you home,” Raylan says. There’s a dirty joke there somewhere, but Tim can’t find it. “Where’re your keys, Tim?” When Tim shrugs in response, Raylan moves toward him. Tim’s almost amused by the slowness of it, the way Raylan acts like he’s trying not to spook a horse. Raylan’s never been afraid of Tim, they both know that, but he has a healthy respect for what Tim’s been trained for since he was a stupid kid, so many years ago.

Raylan’s got his hand on Tim’s arm now, the kind of hesitant touch that lets someone know you’re there. His hand slides down, he loops his fingers around Tim’s wrist, his pointer and middle pressed up against Tim’s pulse. Tim realizes Raylan’s holding his breath, and it makes him want to leap forward and shout, just to scare the cowboy marshal. Just to teach him that Tim’s not made of fucking _glass_. But Tim holds still as Raylan’s free hand--the one that isn’t checking for a spike in Tim’s heartbeat that would signal, well, Tim isn’t sure _what_ it would signal--slides down over his side. It’s a careful movement, pointed. Tim’s no longer sure which one of them is more likely to spook, but he’s _so aware_ of Raylan’s palm as it slides down his ribs. There’s a rational part of Tim that knows Raylan’s being so careful because he’s afraid that Tim will lash out, but the rest of Tim is buzzing with it.

Raylan’s hand finds his pocket. His fingers pull at Tim’s keys until they come loose. They are left standing there, in the orange glow of the parking lot. Tim’s hands hang down by his sides, his fingers loose against his thighs. Raylan’s still holding on to Tim’s wrist with his fingers. He’s standing too close. Tim tips his head up and makes eye contact for the first time since Raylan touched him, and neither of them breathe.

A door slamming behind them makes the hair on the back of Tim’s neck stand up straight, and he whirls around, reaching for a gun he isn’t carrying, just in time for all the lights in the parking lot to go out at once. There’s pitch black all around them, and then a hand on his ribs, and it’s only the warm breath at the back of his neck that keeps Tim in place. “Easy, soldier,” Raylan says in that easy way he always does, “That’s the barkeep telling us it’s time to head out.”

The darkness is absolute, and Tim can still feel the blood rushing under his skin. It’s an adrenaline surge that means there is still something to fight, here in the blackness. The bar is in the middle of nowhere, it’s why Tim likes it, no lights around for miles but the headlights of cars. Finally, after a few seconds, a light flicks on. It’s a window hovering in the middle of the air, it looks like. A shade goes down over it, and Raylan’s got his hand too low, now, resting on Tim’s hip. Tim’s not breathing again, but he can feel Raylan breathing just behind him.

Tim’s keys clank loudly in Raylan’s hand, and after a few more seconds, Tim lets his breath out. Raylan uses the hand on his ribcage to steer Tim back, pull him towards Tim’s car. Tim’s drunk enough to let him, barely paying attention to Raylan and their path, focused only on the land around them, on threats that no one else can see. He stumbles when they get to the car--or Raylan does, and Tim ends up with his chest and chin pressed against the cold metal of the door, and Raylan pressed against his back. The cowboy’s still got that fucking hand on Tim’s hip, and they fumble for balance. Finally, Raylan pulls back, and there’s a wet spot on Tim’s shoulder where his mouth and teeth had landed.

“I thought I was the drunk one,” Tim grumbles, pulling open the passenger’s side door and half falling inside. He hears Raylan laugh, and the crunch of his footsteps through gravel as he comes around to the driver’s side.

“Seatbelts on,” Raylan announces, reaching over an immobile Tim to buckle him in. Tim grumbles at him again, rolling his eyes, and the car purrs to life, and the landscape blurs.

Raylan turns the radio on, and Tim pretends to fall asleep, but he doesn’t. Not really. 

~

Tim knows the sound his car makes when it rolls up against the curb outside his building. He should thank Raylan, get up, slide out and haul himself up to the fourth floor, and into his bed. But he doesn’t. He holds still, because Raylan undoes his seatbelt and slides out of the car. Tim keeps his eyes closed, and suddenly Raylan’s there, pulling the door open and unbuckling Tim’s seatbelt. There’s a funny moment where Tim thinks Raylan’s gonna _carry him_ up the stairs, but then Raylan’s pressing his too warm palm against Tim’s shoulder and saying, “Hey, soldier, wake the fuck up.” But it’s gentler than it should be.

Tim’s legs slide out first, and they land between Raylan’s, and then Tim’s just sort of leaning awkwardly back, looking Raylan in the face, their chests and their hips too close. He’d fall, he thinks, but Raylan’s holding him up, one hand in the small of Tim’s back, the other still on his shoulder.

Raylan steps back first, but pulls Tim with him. “C’mon,” Raylan says, and Tim’s been close enough to Raylan tonight, enough times now, to know that there’s no alcohol on Raylan’s breath. He starts walking toward the door, then stops and turns back around when Tim holds still. He grabs Tim’s hand this time, suddenly less careful about spooking Tim and his ranger honed instincts.

Together, they make their way up the stairs. Neither of them are panting when they finally reach Tim’s landing. They’re both too in shape for that, but Tim can see the flash of Raylan’s smile in his porch light when he says, “Get a fuckin’ elevator.”

Tim tries twice to unlock the door before Raylan takes the keys from him again, sighing as he unlocks all three of Tim’s locks. This is handled without comment, but Raylan’s raised eyebrow says more than enough. Suddenly, they’re in Tim’s apartment with the door closed behind them. Tim doesn’t sway on his feet, he holds his liquor better than that, but Raylan puts that hand back on Tim’s hip anyway, holding him up.

It’s been a long, shitty day.

Tim lets Raylan guide him to the bedroom, sits back on the bed when Raylan undoes his boots for him, leans back against the headboard to pull them off. Raylan helps Tim out of his henley then drops it on the floor. Tim’s left sitting on the bed, just his black jeans on, and he should be surprised when Raylan’s boots come off, when Raylan’s shirt comes off, but he isn’t.

“This fuckin’ day,” Raylan says, like that’s a good reason, like they do this all the time, but Tim isn’t exactly complaining when Raylan finally steps forward again and settles himself over Tim’s hips. Raylan slides his hands through Tim’s hair, tangling his fingers in it and pulling hard enough that it hurts. Tim tips his head back and looks up at Raylan, and they hold still like that for long enough that it should be awkward, but it isn’t.

When Raylan finally kisses him, the only thing Tim thinks is _fuckin finally, you shithead_.

It’s more tender than it should be, Tim thinks, as Raylan’s mouth slots against his own. Raylan’s grip in his hair loosens, then falls away completely, his hands mapping over Tim’s chest and skin. He kisses like he talks, with slow confidence, and for once in his fucking life, Tim gives up control, and lets Raylan push him back against the sheets and drags his nails hard down Raylan’s back.

Raylan bites Tim’s lip, then pulls away. He’s holding himself up over Tim, and Raylan’s hair is a mess, and his lips are red, and Tim smiles for what feels like the first time in fucking _years_.

When Raylan sucks him off, it’s just sex. They’re grown ass men, and both of them know it. In the morning, in the gloomy haze of five am, when Tim rolls over and doesn’t ask, but _tells_ Raylan to fuck him, that’s sex too, and there’s no _just_ about it. It’s like the whiskey from earlier, replacing something bitter with something burning, but in a good way.


End file.
